architecture,--ponderous archways and earthquake-proof walls.
The yellow buildings fronting us beyond the wharf seem half
decayed; they are strangely streaked with green, look as if they
had been long under water. We row ashore, land in a crowd of
lazy-looking, silent blacks.

... What a quaint, dawdling, sleepy place it is ! All these
narrow streets are falling into ruin; everywhere the same green
stains upon the walls, as of slime left by a flood; everywhere
disjointed brickwork, crumbling roofs, pungent odors of mould.
Yet this Spanish architecture was built to endure; those yellow,
blue, or green walls were constructed with the solidity of
fortress-work; the very stairs are stone; the balustrades and the
railings were made of good wrought iron. In a Northern clime
such edifices would resist the wear and tear of five hundred
years. But here the powers of disintegration are extraordinary,
and the very air would seem to have the devouring force of an
acid. All surfaces and angles are yielding to the attacks of
time, weather, and microscopic organisms; paint peels, stucco
falls, tiles tumble, stones slip out of place, and in every chink
tiny green things nestle, propagating themselves through the
jointures and dislocating the masonry. There is an appalling
mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness--the mystery and the
melancholy of a city deserted. Old warehouses without signs,
huge and void, are opened regularly every day for so many hours;
yet the business of the aged merchants within seems to be a
problem;--you might fancy those gray men were always waiting for
ships that sailed away a generation ago, and will never return.
You see no customers entering the stores, but only a black
mendicant from time to time. And high above all this,